According to popular legend, you could tell a Yakuza by his tattoos, his "punch permed" hair (a tight permanent curl similar to a short afro), his facial scars, his missing fingertips, his expensive suits and jewelry, and his expensive foreign car--usually a Benz or a Cadillac. Setagaya Ward, where I spent my first year, seemed to be full of these guys. Regularly I saw heavily tattooed arms hanging out the windows of white Mercedes Benzs; men in punch perms and expensive double-breasted suits. I never saw anyone with missing fingers, though. On my way to work I passed a heavily-secured complex with high walls topped with barbed wire and a "corporate logo" on the door--Yakuza are said to wear gang lapel pins and carry business cards with the gang insignia just like any other company. Generally, unlike the lower-class "chimpira" (gang punks), the Yakuza have little to do with "outsiders," which means they're generally nice to you unless you get in their way. I've heard tales about them making apologies to those outsiders caught in the crossfire of intergang battles, giving compensation to wounded bystanders and so forth. I hope those legends are true.

Personally, I believe I had two encounters with the "Y-guys." First, I hit one with my bicycle.

I was running late for a party, riding full-speed toward the train station. As I careened down the sidewalk, I saw the front end of a big blue car pull out in front of me, and WHAM! The bike wadded into a little ball. I sprawled halfway across the hood, hung my leg on the curb sensor, then fell backwards into a stunned heap of bicycle and fallen gaijin. My jeans were ripped, my knee was twisted and I was bruised and bleeding. But my last thought, right before I hit, was that the car was a Mercedes Benz and I was in deep trouble.

The car stopped, both doors opened and a man and a woman got out. The man had a punch perm and was wearing an expensive suit and jewelry. The woman was young and pretty. Yup, I thought. This is it. I'm dead.

The first words out of the man's mouth were, "Are you all right?" [As an aside, this is something else I really appreciate in Japan: in the US, the first words out of anyone's mouth are, "What's your insurance policy number?"] I assured him that I was okay, refused his repeated offers to take me to a hospital and said I just wanted to go home. So we exchanged business cards and I limped home.

His business card said he owned a warehouse. No warehouse owner I knew drove a Benz and dressed like that. When I got back to my homestay, the matron saw my rumpled condition and asked what was going on, and then I fell apart: "I hit a Yakuza's car and now I'm going to be killed!" She reacted well. She told me to change clothes. Then she and two other family members, dressed in their best, drove me to the local police station. "But I don't wanna press charges--I just don't want him to!" I wailed. "Shut up and come on," was all she said.

We got to the police station, with its halls full of blue-suited troopers marching in neat precision. They asked me questions, then they called in the Benz driver and his girlfriend and asked them questions. In the end, we were both determined to be at fault: they were wrong for pulling the nose of the car out so far (the driver was watching a derelict on the opposite side and didn't see me), and I was at fault for not stopping at each and every intersection. Overall, it was a bad, blind corner. We determined the car was not damaged, save for a missing Benz emblem on the curb sensor. But if it wasn't in the street or embedded in my leg, then it wasn't missing. Good thing, too, as that curb sensor would have cost me a month's pay. Again he offered to pay my hospital bill. I said no hospital and limped home.

Later, he sent me cookies. Then he called to check on me. The matron answered the phone, instantly dropped into the most respectful keigo speech patterns I'd ever heard, then glared as she handed the phone to me. I shakily answered his questions and said thank-you in the most polite manner I could. I never heard from him after that.